


Low-Grade Mystical Shenanigans

by wildhoneypie



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Crack, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 11:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16304417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildhoneypie/pseuds/wildhoneypie
Summary: “Lovely to see you again, Scooby,” Stiles says solemnly to Derek, and holds out his hand until Derek places his hand in Stiles’s. Stiles rubs his thumb over Derek’s wrist, a reassuring motion not unlike gentling an animal, and then swiftly carves an “X” into his palm.And then a dude stumbles out of the forest and before Derek realizes it he’s wolfed out, a little, and pulled Stiles behind him, dropping into a defensive crouch.“Whoa,” the guy says. He’s young--Stiles’s age, his mind supplies--and stupidly, beautifully twinky, with big eyes and a man bun and a too-tight sweater.Stiles sighs. “Ooooookay, Lionel, what did I say about staying in the car?”Lionel screws up his face a little, concentrating hard. “That you’re doing important magical business with skittish werewolf types and that I should work on memorizing all of the lyrics to Carly Rae Jepsen’s ouevre,” (he pronounces it ooo-ver) “...and eating the Red Vines you got me and then you’d take me to get milkshakes? But Stiles, I’m bored.”*****





	Low-Grade Mystical Shenanigans

Derek’s only been back to Beacon Hills for twenty minutes but he already knows it’s a mistake. Everything’s fine, actually, there’s no weird Nemeton smell anymore--old gym bags, burnt peanuts, and good old-fashioned generic unwashed butt--and no one’s really actively died since the Nemeton has been mostly decommissioned, at least according to the semi-hostile Skype calls he has with Scott on the regular.

“It’s more like low-grade mystical shenanigans these days,” Scott had said last month.

Derek can hear Stiles’s phrasing in Scott’s updates to him, but Stiles never appears on the grainy, slightly blue-washed video feed.

Derek asks questions while Scott pouts and says petulant things like, “You know I’ve been a werewolf for _seven years_ now and I’m not actually an idiot?”

But Derek only really has Scott as an angry puppyish 16 year old with a near-constant rage erection for comparison, so he dutifully plays the older brother role and tries to tamp down his natural surliness when he asks, _Are you making nice with the neighboring Steele pack? Have you asked Deaton about whether there’s any other evil flora that might possibly spring to life on Hale territory and wreak bloody havoc?_ The other questions he wants to ask somehow don’t come up. _Did the Jeep finally die? Has he had any broken bones? Is he keeping his hair long or short?_ They don’t talk about Stiles, though he’s in the details of everything Scott says, and he knows from Deaton that Stiles graduated and moved back home to become Scott’s emissary.

But last week Scott had looked tense on the Skype call when he said the pack needed him. Technically not Derek’s pack, not anymore, but not _not_ his pack, and the final step in the decommissioning of the Nemeton required old magic, pack magic.

“Me?” Derek had asked, dubious.

“We tried without you,” Scott said. “Didn’t work. Stiles says you’re the magic ingredient.”

Derek is struck by the thought of Stiles thinking of him, mulling over Derek’s usefulness, his place in the McCall pack, ruminating on it, then reluctantly going to Scott--it must have been reluctant, he’s shown no interest in seeing Derek since he left--and saying, “We need Derek.” Saying Derek’s name out loud for the first time, in what?, years?

Derek thinks a lot about Stiles. Thinks about slamming him into walls, crowding into his space, trying to shove Stiles’s stubbornness back in his face with his solid wall of unyielding muscle, and the absolute gall of Stiles’s mouth, his mind, his grin, his persistence, his belief that he could run with the pack, that he _was_ pack. And he was, as reluctant as Derek was to admit it.

Scott, taking his silence for refusal, scowls, “Come on, it’s nothing, a little blood, a little hand-holding, we dance around, you’re back on the road in a couple hours.”

“Okay,” Derek says. He’s never going to refuse anything of the idiot kids he dragged into a supernatural whirlpool of pain and suffering, not even now, as adults who have mostly moved on and forgotten about him.

If Stiles thinks of him at all, he probably remembers the shoving, the hitting, the anger. The flush of Stiles’s humiliation after Derek snarled at him to stay the fuck away, again. After Stiles showed up anyway, calling _him_ an asshole, and then nearly getting killed. Like he always did. And proving himself useful, like always. Not useful, integral.

And getting some more broken human bones in the process, and some internal bleeding, and once a concussion so bad that he forgot his name. Derek had stumbled from the hospital room and had a panic attack, shredding claw marks into the Camaro’s upholstery while Isaac whined in the backseat and tried to curl up on the floor. Keeping the pack intact had felt like a full time job he failed at every day, and one idiot human kid who was too teenaged to know that he was breakable had felt like one human too many.

Every day that Derek has been away from Stiles has been the best day of Derek’s life.

Which is why twenty minutes into his stay in Beacon Hills, when he hears that heartbeat for the first time in years, he wants to run far away. Stiles catches a foot on a rock and stumbles into the clearing, chuckling, so it takes a minute for Derek to register all the ways he’s different from the teenage Stiles he remembers. Stiles is flushed and his shoulders are broad and he’s out of breath and he’s got that blood-and-spice rack smell of magic all over him, and over it all, there’s the smell of sex, like Stiles had been rolling around with someone just minutes ago and had run directly out of bed to the woods to do blood magic for his werewolf friends. The newness of Stiles’s body and his smells makes Derek’s brain buzz in a kind of electric stupor. He looks good.

It’s just Derek and Scott in the clearing. They’d done some weird, cursory scent-marking and then stood awkwardly waiting for Stiles and making terrible small talk, but Stiles grins expansively and gestures to them, saying “Oh good, the gang’s back together again,” and rolls up his shirt sleeves to reveal forearms covered in rune tattoos. And then he pulls out a knife.

“Lovely to see you again, Scooby,” he says solemnly to Derek, and holds out his hand until Derek places his hand in Stiles’s. Stiles rubs his thumb over Derek’s wrist, a reassuring motion not unlike gentling an animal, and then swiftly carves an “X” into his palm.

And then a dude stumbles out of the forest and before Derek realizes it he’s wolfed out, a little, and pulled Stiles behind him, dropping into a defensive crouch.

“Whoa,” the guy says. He’s young-- _Stiles’s age_ , his mind supplies--and stupidly, beautifully twinky, with big eyes and a man bun and a too-tight sweater.

Stiles sighs. “Ooooookay, Lionel, what did I say about staying in the car?”

Lionel screws up his face a little, concentrating hard. “That you’re doing important magical business with skittish werewolf types and that I should work on memorizing all of the lyrics to Carly Rae Jepsen’s ouevre,” (he pronounces it ooo-ver) “...and eating the Red Vines you got me and then you’d take me to get milkshakes? But Stiles, I’m _bored_.”

Scott snorts and rolls his eyes and Stiles deliberately steps out from behind Derek, patting him on the shoulder. After a pained moment of internal warring with the wolf, Derek yanks his claws back into his body and wills the mutton chops away to wherever they go when they’re not springing up out of misguided, subconscious acts of chivalry that nobody needs or wants.

Stiles slings his arm around Lionel and gathers him to his side, bringing his hand to Lionel’s chin and lifting it for a kiss in a move so smooth and practiced Derek has to look down, collecting himself, shifting things around in his head.

“I’m sorry baby,” Stiles says. “You did so good waiting for me.” Lionel’s eyes look a little unfocused and stupid when Stiles drops his hand, tucking a strand of hair behind Lionel’s ear.

“You always make me wait,” Lionel says, but it’s a whisper now, and he’s staring up at Stiles and speaking with a note of awe that wouldn’t be misplaced in a museum or a church.

“Only because you like it,” Stiles laughs a little, and he’s teasing and funny and so intent, Derek can almost see the frisson of lust sparking between Stiles and Lionel, passing between their bodies like a wave. This is what Stiles looks like when he’s with someone.

“Here,” Lionel says, eventually, sleepily handing over Stiles’s phone. “It was going bananas.”

Stiles stares at the phone for a minute, scrolling through his texts, during which Derek watches the bluish light from the phone halo his face. It should look sickly against Stiles’s skin. When Derek looks up as if coming out of a fog, Scott’s fixed him with a glare that looks slightly amused. Lionel’s gone dormant next to Stiles, staring off into the distance, probably powering down until Stiles needs him.

Stiles finishes scrolling and laughs, shaking his head. “We gotta get to the high school.”

“Don’t say it--” Scott says.

“Jinkies, gang!” Stiles crows. “Looks like we’ve got a mystery to solve.”

 

*

 

It turns out the entire men’s Varsity basketball team has mono.

“Why is this a supernatural event, again?” Scott says from where he’s sitting on the bleachers, staring at his phone. “Tell them to stop making out with each other, or whatever.”

The assistant coach, a twenty-something kid named Phillip, glares at Scott.

“Didn’t you hear Phil?” Stiles says. He’s doing a little excited jumping dance. “It’s not just that the players are all super tired, Scotty! Their shoes are worn out at the beginning of every practice! SHENANIGANS!” he yells, doing a disco pointy arm.

“It’s Phillip, not Phil,” says Phillip. His arms are crossed over his chest defensively. “I know we only met just briefly at, uh...the club, but I just thought, uh, this seemed like your deal, or whatever.” His face pinks up and he looks down at his shoes, looking about twelve years old.

Stiles laughs delightedly and claps a hand on Phillip’s shoulder. “You thought right, my friend. You thought right.” Phillip seems to lean into it subconsciously, relaxing a bit. A small wave of arousal bleeds out of Phillip at the contact. It smells like orange furniture polish.

“I’m gonna go, I guess,” Derek says.

Stiles squawks indignantly. “What, no! Phil says there’s a practice in like, 20 minutes, dude, isn’t it going to kill you to go back to your lair without figuring out what’s going on?” Stiles’s hand is moving back and forth across Phillip’s upper back in what looks like a soothing rhythm. Derek wonders if he realizes he’s doing it.

“It’s Phillip,” says Phillip, but his eyes flutter shut for a moment and some more orange furniture polish smell leaks out into the air.

“Uh, no,” Derek says.

Stiles’s face falls a bit but then he seems to accept it. “Alright then, dude, see you around I guess,” he says and turns back to Phillip. “Maybe you should show me the locker rooms, lemme see if there’s a magical trace there.” And then he just...walks away. Doesn’t look back.

Right, well. Derek grabs his coat. Stares at his feet. Collects himself. Back to the house and _Great British Bake Off_ and Skype with Cora who calls him a loser for eating a TV dinner in front of the computer. It’s about all he can handle, anyway. When he looks up, Scott’s stopped texting and is staring at him, brows furrowed. Then he rolls his eyes.

“You should stay,” Scott says. “Just for the weekend.”

“I’ve got...things. To get back to.” Derek says, thinking guiltily about the time he smacked Stiles’s head against the steering wheel.

“Uh huh.” Scott says, dubious. “Just stay for another minute, will you? Tell me what you smell on Stiles when he gets back.”

“Sex and magic,” Derek mumbles, still looking at his feet.

“Oh my god,” Scott says. “Is this what it was like for you? Wrangling sullen teenagers all those years? I’m saying to you, man, most days I’m still not sure if the bite is a gift, but in this case, Derek, the bite is a gift. Please use your stupid werewolf senses and smell the stupid boy that _you’ve been stupidly gone over for_ \--”

“I’m not sure why you can’t just tell me whatever it is right now,” Derek growls.

“Ohmygod, Derek, because it’s not my information to tell, you can’t just out someone--” Scott seems to give up then, flashing his eyes at Derek and using the Alpha voice to growl, “ _STAY HERE, YOU GROWLY DIPSTICK.”_

Derek still hasn’t gotten out of the habit of being kicked around by the elder members of his family and feeling in it an odd brand of prickly affection, so his traitorous wolf flattens his ears to his head. Derek gives a involuntary full body shiver, and he sits abruptly down on the bleachers, and he stays.

It’s another ten minutes of uncomfortable silence, which ends in Scott patting Derek awkwardly on the back, murmuring, “It’s gonna be okay, buddy,” in a strangled voice, when thankfully Stiles stumbles back into the room with Phillip, and Derek almost wolfs out at the smell of sex.

“Scott,” Derek grits.

“Dude.” Scott says, and gives him the puppy eyes.

Phillip looks a little less uptight, and Stiles is saying, “I’m telling you, man, it’s 2018, no one’s going to care, you know, it doesn’t even have to be a big announcement, Phil, I’m not saying you need to string up a banner or anything--”

“It’s Phillip,” Phillip says, but he’s nodding along to Stiles’s pronouncement, and what the fuck is going on here? Is Stiles performing some kind of sex therapy for closet cases? Is it like a business? Which leaves aside the major question of: did they just? Go at it in the boys locker room? Derek can smell the unsavory odor of moist jock itch from here, how anyone could shut out the smell of the locker room for long enough to experience any pleasure--but then he gets a little caught up thinking about Stiles laughing into Phillip’s neck as he unzips him, gentling him like a horse, and then as he kneels between his legs, looking up at him from underneath his lashes, he says, _Come on, you’re so tense, baby, just let me--_

Scott pointedly clears his throat and gives Derek significant eyebrows, which is--oh right, Derek’s supposed to be doing a sleuth n’ sniff.

Just then the first boys show up for practice and Stiles takes a couple of them aside, saying, “Hey, you mind if I ask you a couple questions?” and the boys are nodding and sitting next to Stiles on the bleachers, subtly angling their bodies toward him, and it’s like the universe hates Derek a little, which okay, to be fair, he probably could have guessed that prior to this exact moment.  

“Are you going to do something,” Derek says flatly to Scott, then gestures around the gym to the sluggish basketball players, some of whom are yawning through half-hearted dribbling. Two large dudes who were standing at the three point line are lying on the ground, eyes closed. One starts to snore.

“Nah,” Scott says, returning to his phone. “Stiles has it.”

And apparently he does, because he stands up not two minutes later, stretching, and says, “Oh man, this is great, so: twelve dancing princesses kinda deal, but with Varsity basketball. They were cursed to silence but I got around that. I’m guessing we’re going to discover one of the fae’s got a kid on the JV team.”

“I just wanna stop tap dancing from 3 to 6 am every night,” one of the kids at the three point line says, eyes still closed, and then looks startled. “Whoa, every time I tried to say that before, I burst into song instead.”

“So awesome, what did you sing?” Stiles says. Phillip shoots him a look. “And horrifying!” Stiles amends. “Super, ah, intensely...no, no, it’s just awesome and the visual is going to give me joy for years.”

“Mostly Bing Crosby standards. Some Ricky Martin,” the kid says, and falls back asleep, his breath evening out.

Derek has gotten closer and closer to Stiles, by way of pretending to collect and re-rack the loose basketballs the players have all abandoned. The team is sleeping as one, now, mostly curled up at center court. He steps over a kid whose arm is outstretched, one hand on a basketball on the rack.

“Bless his little heart,” Stiles says. “That’s gotta be a holding foul.”

Derek sits down at Stiles’s side, reaching behind him to grab his jacket off the ground. And on his way back up, while he’s here, if he just--

“Dude,” Stiles says.

“Oh dude,” Scott groans. “Derek, come on.”

“But are you smelling me?” Stiles says.

Derek’s concentrating--sex, spice rack: cumin, cloves, smoked paprika, rosemary, oregano, and there, something else, a little bit different, he should’ve caught it before, it’s strange and un-Stileslike, a bit like, a bit--

“You’re not human,” Derek says.

Stiles sighs. “Scott.”

“Bro,” Scott says.

“ _Bro_ ,” Stiles says.

“I know, bro, I’m sorry.” Scott says, and looks contrite.

Phillip is suddenly there, looking between Derek and Stiles, a bit timid. He scratches at his beard nervously.

“I’m not sure if this is appropriate or not,” Phillip says. “But uh, maybe you could call me? Stiles?”

Stiles grins up at Phillip, practically glowing, and says “Sure thing, Phil.”

“Get it, Coach C!” one of the boys yawns from the floor.

“It’s Phillip,” Phillip says, weakly. “I’m gonna go call their parents.”

And then Lionel walks in. “I’ve been waiting in the car _foreverrrrrr_ ,” he whines, walking up to Stiles. His sweater is off and he’s wearing an inappropriate v-neck t-shirt. The V is far, far too deep. Lionel’s bun has come undone and there are sleep lines on his face, from where he was waiting in the car, desperate for it, for _Stiles_. Derek sighs. Stiles shoots him a puzzled look.

“You like to wait,” Stiles reminds Lionel.

“Yeah,” Lionel says, and his eyes unfocus again, a sweet smell coming off him so strongly it’s practically sticky.

Derek turns to assess Stiles’s face. “You’re an incubus.”

“Got it in one,” Stiles says, sounding a little bitter. “Friendly neighborhood sex demon. And yes, this is why you’re suddenly”--he gestures at Derek as if to indicate his whole deal--“ _affected_ by my presence.”

“Isn’t he great?” Lionel says, dreamily. “Never feeds too much. What a gentleman.”

Scott’s still reclined on the bleachers a few feet away. He’s got one eye on the proceedings but is also clearly playing Candy Crush on his phone. “Derek always smelled that way around you, even before you got bit, bro,” he murmurs to Stiles.

“ _Scott_ ,” Derek says. It’s actually kind of a huge faux pas to talk about the more...indelicate smells that wolves can perceive around others. Derek had spent years of his life with teenagers, and had gotten pretty used to the way lust--candy sweet and so thick it was almost nauseating--had rolled off of all of them indiscriminately. To Derek, it had always seemed like everyone was horny for everything. He’d once left the room when the toaster had gone off and Isaac had smelled so overcome by lust at the smelled of a toasted pop tart that Derek had figured he’d want to be alone. Derek, on the other hand, had had particular tastes. Those tastes haven’t changed much over the years.

Stiles is leveling him with a piercing gaze, now. “You liked to rough me up,” he says. A wave of that other smell hits Derek, and he can see Stiles’s amber eyes glittering at him.

“Actually, uh. I wanted to apologize for that,” Derek says, and looks down at his hands, feeling miserable. “I was in a bad place...for a decade or so. I shouldn’t have….I shouldn’t have done that.”

Stiles looks startled, and the smell dissipates a little. “Whoa,” he says.

“Glamour didn’t work, huh,” Scott says, from where he’s still crushing candy, not looking at them.

“Stilesssss,” Lionel whines. “Come on, I have work tomorrow, can we go back to your place to feed now--”

Derek’s wolfed out before he can register that’s what he’s doing, but the growl dissipates in his throat and he concentrates on his hands to bring the change back under control. He’s got control now. He can...he can do this.

“Okay,” he says to himself, still staring at his hands. “I’m gonna…” and he gets up and makes his way over to Scott. “Good to see you,” he says, and holds out his hand.

“Uh huh, see you around, D.” Scott doesn’t look up from his phone.

“Holy fuck,” Derek hears, and when he turns around to actually look at Stiles, Stiles has his mouth open, gawking at him. Then he’s stalking towards Derek with a truly frightening look of purpose and when he gets to Derek the movement doesn’t stop until Derek’s got a Stiles wrapped around him, ankles locked behind his back, arms around his neck.

“Permission to kiss the everloving shit out of you, because I’m hungry, and it’s _you_ and because _you fucking love me_ , and nobody told me and we’re going to have WORDS about this Scott, believe me, I mean it’s so much easier to feed with someone you actually _love_ let alone the power surge from having a _supernatural partner_ , come on we could’ve been--” and Stiles is pointing at Scott now from where he’s perched on Derek like an angry treed cat, and Derek knows Stiles will just keep going on forever if he doesn’t step in, so it’s really just to shut him up when he says, “Permission granted.”

  



End file.
